


Return of the Wolf

by JustAnotherGhostwriter



Series: Rose Tyler and the Cracks of the Universe [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-13
Updated: 2013-09-13
Packaged: 2017-12-26 11:11:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/965255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustAnotherGhostwriter/pseuds/JustAnotherGhostwriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pete's World was almost peaceful when they started getting strange, unexplainable messages about an alien race known only as The Silence. Nobody at Torchwood thought it had anything to do with them until a page arrived that told Rose she needed to dimension hop once again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Return of the Wolf

**Author's Note:**

> This was plonked out in 45 minutes before anything about the 50th had been revealed and before I'd started on Season 5. In other words: it's full of mistakes, both in terms of canon and in terms of good writing. In fact, the whole series is. But for those who still wish to read it, my eternal thanks is always given. As always, the hugest thanks to The Silver Devastation on Tumblr for beta reading. 
> 
> Use, reblog, edit, destroy etc as you will. I don’t care. Just if it is used for fic or art in some way please consider linking me? I love reading/looking.
> 
> [Part of the Great Fic Dump From Tumblr of 2013]

Rose Tyler was really starting to view the word ‘impossible’ with a sort of sceptical dislike. _It’s impossible to bring your father back from the dead, Rose, no matter how many stars you wish on_ , they’d told her. _You amount to anything great? Don’t make me laugh – that’s impossible_. Time travel is impossible. Aliens are impossible. A man changing his entire body was impossible. A planet orbiting a black hole was impossible. A child bringing drawings to life was impossible. And, one of her all-time favourites by now: jumping between universes was impossible. Opening the walls between universes was _very impossible, Rose_ , she’d been told how many times.

And yet, she almost needed two hands to be able to count the number of times the walls had cracked or caved.

( _“You can’t”_ he’d told her. She _can’t_ her ass.)

Not very long ago, the latest break in the walls would have delighted her beyond words. Not very long ago, even a mention of a crack would have had her packed and ready to go, eager and so very, very desperate. But this time, when the news reached them that the walls were not entirely stable, Rose only felt interest and mild curiosity (and a little smugness at the look on her Doctor’s face when he was told that once again the impossible was happening). The thing was, Rose was happy now. The desire to know what the _other_ Doctor was doing – to know if he was okay, to know if he’d found somebody else, to know who that person was (she found herself hoping, sometimes, that it was a boy or a woman like Donna who loved him but not like _that_ and it was selfish but she honestly couldn’t help it) – _that_ desire would probably always be there in her. But it was faint. She’d always wonder, and she’d always want to know. But she’d never act on her curiosity by leaping across dimensions again. Because _her_ Doctor wasn’t allowed back in the universe she’d come from – paradoxes and all that. And, quite honestly, she was okay with just spending the rest of her life with him.

And so this time, Rose Tyler – honorary author of how to do impossible things every other day – was content to just keep an eye on the cracks and muse about them.

That was until information on The Silence started seeping through the cracks. At first it hadn’t been a big deal – just one more tidbit of knowledge in the plethora of whispers those monitoring the cracks day and night picked up. It was a little disconcerting that her Doctor didn’t know about them, but as he said he couldn’t know _everything._

And then the rumours around The Silence grew. Torchwood One began actively searching for anything they could find and they finally managed to compile a large file on these mysterious people. A lot of the information sounded utterly ludicrous (and this was to a bunch of people who dealt with aliens every day). A lot of the stories contradicted one another. The one thing that remained constant, though, the one thing that it all seemed to lead to was that The Silence was linked to the Doctor. And it didn’t look like it was in a good way.

Still Rose clung to rational, aided by her parents and her husband. The Doctor had friends – he had to. There would be people to help him. And, besides, he was _the Doctor_. He was a Time Lord – an utterly brilliant Time Lord. He would be alright without her. It was worrying, but not worth flinging herself across universes for.

Then, inexplicably – _impossibly_ – a message appeared from out of the cracks. A single sheet of paper, like one would find as a print-out from a Word Processor. It said simply: _The Silence want to kill the Doctor._ The rest of the page was filled with tiny, repetitive words that made Rose’s blood run cold. _Bad Wolf. Bad Wolf Bad Wolf Bad Wolf…_

This could not be explained away. This could not be ignored. At first, people thought Rose was overreacting. Even her Doctor, who knew more about Bad Wolf than he let on to her, she knew that, did not agree with her plan to go to the other universe (he tried to hide it, her brilliant Doctor, but the jealousy and hurt in his eyes when he heard she wanted to risk her life by hopping into a universe to save the other Doctor… well, it cut her deep.) She tried very hard to remain level-headed and explain her cause, but eventually the side she’d inherited straight from her mother shone out of her and she ripped everybody a new one.

You see, Rose was not going only for the Doctor. Rose was going for _Rose_. Because if she’d sent herself a message, then it meant she _had_ to go. And not just for the Time Lord Doctor. Because that message had awakened a new fear in Rose, one that she’d never considered before but one that weighed so heavily on her it made her _just know_ that it was not a fear without reason. What if – her mind whispered to her over and over – what if The Silence killed the Doctor? And what if, when they saw that the walls to the universes were open, they decided one Doctor was not enough?

She was not going to lose her Doctor. She would die a million times over before she let that happen.

He didn’t like it. He tried almost everything to get her to stay, to get her to stop, to dissuade the elite team she was briefing and training to take with her. But Rose Tyler was a stubborn ass when she wanted to be, and this was something she would not compromise on. This was _her_ earth to defend – her mother, father, brother, team, best friend, _husband_. And he had to accept that. He still hated it though. Still hated it until the very point she was standing in front of him, dressed and ready to leap. Her team stood behind her, all dressed in black and all wearing animal masks. The masks had been a last-minute idea: an attempt to keep them from meeting themselves or people who knew the other thems. It made them look like a band of serial killers, but there hadn’t been more time to do anything else but run down to the costume shop on the next corner.

“Rosie.” Jake’s voice was gentle yet muffled by the dog mask he wore. For her second-in-command, the mask was perfect.

“Please.” It broke her heart in several places to hear him whisper that, but all she did was shake her head.

“I’ll be back before you know it, yeah? If they come through… run. Please.”

The twitching of his lips was all she’d get for a while, she knew. “I always do.”

“I love you,” she told him, and if she placed a little more emphasis on the word ‘you’ than necessary she wasn’t sorry.

With one kiss, she stepped away from her Doctor and into the midst of the rabbits, dogs, chickens and other animals. And then Rose locked eyes with the reason for her _everything_ and put on her wolf mask. The jump happened a second later.


End file.
